Resilient Children
by Sano S. Sagara
Summary: Two Part John Sherlock friendship. The boys are resilient, and they need each other.
1. John

Resilient Children

**A/N-This thing fell out of my brain over the course of my Developmental Psych lecture and the Syntax and Semantics lecture that followed. I have no other explanations. **

Patient. Or Patience.

John Watson was a patient man, ask anyone in London.

But they're wrong.

Ask the men still in Afghanistan. They would tell you that John possesses a remarkable amount of patience, but he was seldom a patient man.

He was an army doctor, and that meant he didn't have a desk. He didn't have attending nurses, no facilities even halfway sufficient. What he did have were patients.

A call would come and he would be off, racing to the convoy with his kit in hand. He would be in a flurry of blood and sand and mortars until the job was done. And he would come back, blood on his hands. Either beside a gurney or a body bag.

Until the day he came back _on_ the gurney.

The gunshot's deafening report was all John could remember after he reached the young man whose leg had been blown off by a mine. Next he knew, he was in a medical examination room on base, listening to another doctor tell him how he would be lucky if he lived.

The doctors told him to have patience, that he would get the use of his leg back. That his arm would be good as new if he just did the physical therapy.

Be patient. Wait. Work slowly. God that phrase, how many times had he uttered it himself, "Take it slow," now as he was here in the PT ward doing _hand exercises_ with a ball of sand, John was certain he would die.

But he isn't one to be patient. Or be a patient. John pushes, tries, does. And he limps out of physical therapy weeks ahead of expectations.

But the dreams and that limp followed him out.

Resilient, his doctor had told him. He was 'resilient' to have bounced back to quickly after the accident but John knows this isn't true.

His resilience isn't his ability to walk or the fact that his shoulder no longer catches when he reaches for something.

John knows that he is resilient.

Every morning, when in a cold sweat and gasping from a nightmare, he reaches for his gun.

Places it to his temple.

John is resilient.

He doesn't fire.


	2. Sherlock

Resilient Children

**A/N-This thing fell out of my brain over the course of my Developmental Psych lecture and the Syntax and Semantics lecture that followed. I have no other explanations. **

Sherlock was a highly observant man. His life was based upon his observations, his deductions. So his realization on that utterly boring afternoon astounded him.

There is a concept in psychology. An old concept. Old concepts are held on high in science. Vilified in science. Abused and bent and prodded in science.

But people resist change with tooth and nail even when they are the ones who've catalyzed the change. Darwin himself was disturbed by his own world shattering theory.

But sometimes an old concept is the most attractive battleground for new knowledge.

Nature and Nurture—at war since the advent of training, personality traits; since the beginning first bloody jab between behaviorists and mentalists.

Recent work indicates that a biological predisposition can be exacerbated or stifled based upon the home environment of a child.

Behavioral problems can be shunted away- mostly- by parentage. Mental illnesses abated and negative personality traits that are a biological quirk can be controlled, lessened, affected, by a child's home.

Or everything can snowball.

Sherlock's childhood was not one of suffering from a want or abuse, but a pressure to be more, to be perfect…

To make them proud…

Sherlock is the way he is based upon a million (and six) tiny biological, mental, and social influences culminating in the world's first, last, and only Consulting Detective.

Because he was a resilient child.

Though your mileage may vary on the term 'successful adult'.

So Sherlock knows he is different. Knows he overcame. He didn't overcome ethnicity or gender or even socioeconomic bias. He overcame expectations.

Low ones, high ones.

His own. His brother's. His parents'.

There is no one like him, no one to understand him. Words thrown at him like Freak and psychopath—

Sociopath, please—

Are at the same time exceedingly wrong and frightfully right.

Biology is not destiny.

Neither is Psychology.

Sherlock notices the instant he meets the man that John has also overcome.

Soldier. Doctor. Afghanistan? No, Iraq, No. Afghanistan. Injured. Loyal, proud, resoundingly proper. Psychosomatic? Guily. Guilt in a man who stands at the ready even now?

So what if the brother was actually a sister. Sherlock had been right about the important parts.

John is a survivor.

A resilient child.

Maybe John is more like Sherlock than anyone else realizes.

Sherlock said 'danger' and John came running.

Running?

Boredom. John missed the war. John Needs the fight. Sherlock was John's dealer, John's gateway to the drugs of adrenaline, fear, and the headiness of war.

And John was better than cocaine to Sherlock.

They are resilient.


End file.
